As this page notes, my uncle was a US representative who voted against starting implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. My father is a high ranking executive of a major oil company. Have images of them in your mind? They probably don't include my uncle installing enough solar power on his house to sell back to the grid, or his dismay at our consumption of so much Colorado river water that it no longer reaches the sea. Likewise, your mental images probably don't include my father as an avid backpacker who I've repeatedly heard sing the praises of hybrids like the Prius and sounded excited when he learned I was getting an electric car. In short, often things aren't what they at first seem. This is no less true when it comes to the environment.

To get the Aptera, I retire an '86 Olds. Yes, it's an old car, but it runs just fine. Embodied in this car is nearly two tons of glass and steel, a massive amount of energy. Even if I can find a buyer, I will be hastening the end of its life. I will be replacing it with an electric marvel of modern technology, made of composites and aluminum and other lightweight materials. Yet the aluminum embodies even more energy investment than steel, and composites are poorly recycled.

At the top of this page, you see a picture of a copper mine. Compared to dozens that pockmark the landscape of southern Arizona, this one is tiny. They fill with pools of acid leachate full of heavy metals. Embodied in the Aptera is many pounds of copper -- copper that may well have been sourced from these very mines we will be passing by. In my purchase, I am participating in this devastation of the environment.

Ultimately, it is not the producers who are causing this damage to occur. It is consumers like me. This is my fault.

When it comes to the choices we make, all we can do is attempt to cause the least impact on the environment. In this case, I've looked at the numbers. As much as I hate contributing to additional resource consumption to build a new car, for example, my gasoline car is burning four hundred gallons of gas per year -- many times the car's own weight over its lifespan. That exhaust isn't getting buried in a landfill or recycled; it's going straight into the air we breathe, raising temperatures, acidifying oceans, and worsening human health via particulate matter, nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and VOCs. It's not a one-time cost; it's a continuing cost of a scale dangerous to the world in which I live. Yes, electricity itself is not without consequences, and yes, half of it currently comes from coal. However, due to the greater efficiency of powerplants and their use of centralized scrubbers, grid power is a much better source; furthermore, it's far easier to clean up the grid than to clean up two hundred fifty million tailpipes.

So, while there may never be any easy solutions, there can be solutions that are better than others. We simply have to be vigilant to all of the consequences of our actions as we change our world for what we hope will be for the better.